


Forgiveness

by Cards_Slash



Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: Alternate Timeline, Alternate Universe - Dark, M/M, Please Practice Fire Safety
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-28
Updated: 2016-02-28
Packaged: 2018-05-23 20:00:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6128451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cards_Slash/pseuds/Cards_Slash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Malik takes advantage of Altair's obvious weakness for him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Forgiveness

**Author's Note:**

> round one of the evil contest, the prompt was: Altair and Malik are in a "relationship" (for a given value of the word. You can decide). Altair is in love with Malik. Malik has never (not even for a moment) ever forgiven Altair for everything that happened after Solomon's Temple (or equivalent event if an AU).

Altair came like a grayed ghost, long after it was too late to be of use. Malik was dying before he could be executed and it seemed hardly polite or worthwhile to fight the inevitable. Still, Altair came, stealing through the long shadows of the dungeon on inexhaustible feet. 

In a house, in the village, far from any place secure, Altair pressed his flat palms against Malik’s body from his matted hair to his hips like he was feeling for the parts of him that were dying. And when the worry had cooled, he sat back on his knees and looked at Malik propped against the wall. There was pink all around his eyes and red spots on his old-man’s-face, he said, “did you kill him? Did you kill Sef?” 

Malik reached out with his hand and motioned Altair forward. He caught the soft, worn robes he wore with the curl of his fingers and pulled Altair into him. They slid to the ground; flattened out by the weight of death and regret. He was Altair’s pillow, flat against the ground and hot from a dying fever. 

Altair’s voice was steel beneath liquid fear, he said, “do you forgive me” in desperation.

There was darkness coming from every side, the relaxing drag of death seemed to be offering long earned respite. Malik said, “I have a son now,” and he was not sure if he even meant to say it. 

Altair said, “do you forgive me?”

Malik opened his eyes, he tipped his head and rested the curve of his hand around Altair’s shoulder—so close to him now—and he shook his head. “No,” he said. There was no joy in the words, only the fading of the light, "you'll understand now. I've done it, I've taken what you value."

Altair's fingers were in his hair and his face was pushed against the hollow of his shoulder. It felt like his mouth was moving but Malik's wears were full of white noise; a comforting lull of nothing. He thought he might have tried to smile but his mouth was sloppy and beyond control. It must have been why Malik said, “protect my son, Altair.” And he kissed him—that final time, soft and covered in filth—and Altair kissed him back with tears on his face. 

\--

Abbas was fat. He had always been; the way he had always been greasy. The whole of his face and his hair seemed that if they could be rolled into a rag and squeezed they would produce oil enough to power a dozen lamps for a dozen years. He did not move with delicacy but with a lumbering predisposition toward graceless noise-making. 

Yet, he sat like a king opposite Malik, across a divide made of damp soil and dripping ground water. He was gracious in this final hour with his fat lips drawn up in this final triumph. “You’ve had a son,” he said. “Should I kill him?”

“Does the murder of children excite you?” Malik asked. He had grown gray in the long days of his confinement. No less discontent with life but less full of vital fight. The long hours of these final weeks were prowling nightmares that walked in and out of his mind. Hallucinations of things past that sat like courtly phantoms on all sides of his vision. He could see the whole timeline of his life now; he could find the mistakes that had led him to this end. 

Abbas rubbed his rough fingers across his mouth while he pondered those words. “I am surprised you were able to father one. I did not think women were of much interest to you.” But he reclined into the soft lines of his own ample flesh and let out a sigh like deflating. “But I did not think you would kill your master’s son either.”

Malik smiled at those words. “You do not know me very well, Abbas, if you imagine Altair was ever _my_ Master. Your mistake will lead you straight to your death. When he comes, he will come at you like a demon, possessed by an inconsolable rage. He will peel the flesh from your bones while you scream for mercy.”

Abbas spread his hands with a regretful motion. “A pity you will not be alive to see it.”

“Yes, a pity.”

The words were not what Abbas wanted. The confrontation was not what he had envisioned in the rooms of the castle he had stolen. It was caught in the lines of his face, pinched in wrinkles around his eyes and mouth that wrinkled up at his nose in disgust. Perhaps he had imagined that Malik would beg for his life, or perhaps he had thought there would be fear in his voice. When the bitterness filled Abbas’ mouth to overflowing, he said, “why should he avenge _you_? You that killed his son?”

Malik only smiled. 

\--

Sef’s hands were strong but his flesh was weak. His face was a near perfect replica of Altair’s. Malik had considered it for the many months since the man had left. He had considered it while the boy spoke to him of his confusion regarding his choice to stay behind.

He had considered it in the training yard while he watched the boy—bare chested and brilliantly pale—training the novices. 

A pot was knocked sideways in the struggle, the broken shards of it were spread across the floor. The weeping of the woman and the shrieking of the girls was a buzzing sound at the right of his vision. Malik had never condoned collateral damage. 

But Sef was clutching at his clothing, pulling at the robes with his strong fingers as his blood spread like a puddle across the bed he shared with his wife. His lips were stained pink from the blood that came like bubbles from the tears in his lungs. But his voice was a raw sound, saying, “why?” like in the whole of his life he had never felt a sudden clutch of danger.

Malik sat next to his bed, with his knees in the blood and the knife laying just beyond reach. His fingers were sticky-and-weathered, gone soft with age and so many years spent cloistered in the hell of his own making. He touched Sef’s face the way he had touched Kadar’s face (for the very last time) and he said, “you are not as fast or as strong as your brother. That is why he left you. That is why I chose you.”

Sef’s eyes were wide but his face was clammy and his grasping hands were losing strength. “ _Why_ ,” he wheezed again, “my father—he loved you.”

Yes, that was true. Malik shushed the words. “Close your eyes. It will not be long now.” And Sef’s teeth were pink and bare as he stared without blinking at him, the surprise and the disgust that caught in his expression turned waxy and still as the last breath of life bled out of his body.

\--

But it was Altair, older now than any of them of them could have imagined, pulling at his robes out on a balcony. It was his voice, the same now as it had ever been, and his whimpering pleas. “Come with me, Malik. Come away from here—there is so much of the world, you will be useful in this fight.”

Malik spared him only a glance at those words, “I have told you not to go. I have told you this is not our fight. You will not listen to my words _here_ , I do not expect that you will listen to them there.”

Altair’s sigh was not defeat but conditioned obedience. There were words still, wobbling behind his teeth, the impulse that had never died. His face was too old to be so full of youthful hope. His hands and his body too weathered and too beaten to still be clinging as tightly as they did to a desire he had never sated. “Will you send me away with nothing, then?”

It would be satisfying in its own right, to send Altair away on a trip he would never return from with nothing. It was a petty sense of righteousness that set like a flame in the center of his chest. But Malik covered Altair’s hand with his own, “not with nothing.” He leaned forward to kiss Altair. 

It was a fluttering thing, so sweet and so brief.

Then Malik smiled at him, “safety and peace, Altair.” And he left him.

\--

Malik’s bed was made of fine things. 

“Maria says we must go,” Altair whispered into the creases of his neck. His back was bent from exertion, his arms still roped with muscles were quivering at the effort of keeping him above Malik. And his legs, with his thin-pale-skin, were bent at the knee, the length of his thighs under Malik’s as his softening dick pulled free of Malik’s body. 

Fucking made him lethargic; so long after the start, it seemed that the only defiance Altair had never unlearned in all the years since the start was the soft whisper of his breath in those first few moments after orgasm when Malik’s brain was slow and his body was heavy. 

“You should not,” Malik said back. He rested his head on his bent arm and blew a stream of narrow breath into Altair’s graying hair. “There are many enemies lying in wait, _here_ , where you sleep.” 

But Altair lowered himself down to lay against Malik’s body (flattened and fattened with age) and kissed his cheek and his jaw and his chin and his lips. He wallowed in the stolen affection like a fat piglet in mud. Still, he said, “I cannot stand by and do nothing. You will keep the enemies from our home.”

Malik did not laugh at him but smile like he was _pleased_ because he was, in a way. “Your faith in me continues to inspire.” And when Altair kissed him again, he kissed back.

\--

“I forget sometimes,” Altair said he came from the library. His eyes were hollowed out from hours of staring into the depths of the Apple. His body was revitalized by the many hidden wonders that had been shown to him. He was no old man in those moments, but the living ghost of the man he had been when he was instated into this office. He said, like he had to restart the thought to finish it, “I forget that you have not forgiven me. I forget what you said when we were young men. I forget how we have gotten here.”

“I do not,” Malik said. 

Altair nodded at the words. “I wonder if you have already done it, or if you have yet to do as you promised. I wonder if I will know when you do.”

Malik only shook his head at these ponderings. “You are talking nonsense, Altair. Go and find your wife, she has more tolerance for such talk.” 

\--

Sef was fourteen when Malik decided he would kill the boy. It did not come to him all at once but across weeks-and-months (or years) of thinking it through. He had considered Darim, but the boy was too useful and too bright to serve as a sacrifice. 

It made sense that it was Sef; the younger and the softer brother. 

\--

Maria came, with violent hate, like a venomous thing wrapped in the pale skin of a girl. “You cannot have him!” like she had only just discovered the truth. Her hands were quick-and-sharp, slapping across his face and his shoulders and his arms. She beat him with inexhaustible energy. “You monster! You beast! You cannot have him!”

Malik shoved her back, he moved to freedom as she stumbled across debris on the floor and fell on her ass. Her mouth clicked shut with sudden jarring halt of the fall and he rubbed the raised red welts that covered his face and his arms. “You are mad,” he said to the fast punch of her breath.

Then she was up again, on her feet with a swish of skirts at her ankles and her hands coiled into his robes. There were witnesses coming, around a corner and through the halls, to see what she was doing. Maria said, “I have always known what you allow him to do, I have not always known the price you have named for the _pleasure_. He is stronger and better than you,” she hissed at him.

“But not smarter,” he whispered back into the fury of her pink face. “He’s _never_ been smarter.”

Maria shoved him back against the wall and slapped him across the face again. There was a knife in her free hand and her fingers pressed to his chest like she meant to pierce his heart. There was brilliant fire in her; a true devotion and _adoration_ for the man that she had married (like playacting) and _then_ fallen in love with. In a fair world, she would have taken her chance and spared the future of her children, but there was no fairness left in the world. “I will free him from you.”

“No, you won’t,” Malik said. 

Altair was there with a quick-quick step, and there was no hesitation in the inertia of his body. He shoved Maria back and put himself between them. Every hard line of his body was in prominent relief beneath his clothes. Every draw of his breath was another oath of devotion. Malik watched from over the man’s shoulder, watched as Maria fully _realized_ the truth of his words. 

“Do not worry,” he said to Altair, “we were only playing.” And his hand across Altair’s shoulder relaxed the fight from his limbs. The touch of his fingers ran down the prominent bones of his spine and turned Altair to look at him. Malik was not boastful by nature but he tipped his head and Altair kissed him without a word of prompting. His hands clutched at Malik’s body to be sure of the solidity of it and only after he was sure of it, he looked at Maria. 

“Are you injured?” he asked.

“No,” Maria said. “No I am not.” 

\--

Malik secured absolute obedience with morning-after wounds. There were bruises like hand prints across his body. He stripped himself to be viewed-and-inspected, to watch the embarrassed, shameful flinch of Altair’s whole body. 

“I’m sorry,” Altair said on his knees. “Malik—I’m sorry.”

“I thought you had chosen a better life,” Malik said. (But he hadn’t.) “I thought you were happy with Maria.” (But he hadn’t.) 

Altair was on his knees, with his hands on Malik’s skin, saying, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I'll do anything, I'm sorry.” (Oh, and Malik had known he would.)

\--

It was inevitable that Altair would break. It was admirable he had last so long and under such immense pressure. His desire was a force of nature; an uncontrolled thing that had driven him to ruin. It had been too tightly girdled for too long; Malik had watched it eroding under the strain of denial. It had been years since Altair married Maria, years since Malik permitted the man the use of his body.

He kept them apart; always apart. And Altair had longed for him with the desperation of a wild animal, slowly growing rabid by the hellish nearness of his heart’s most coveted desire. Altair had broken (at last) in the library of Masyaf, with a half-dozen witnesses within hearing distance and no man left to see. He had snarled, “enough!” at Malik like it was the end of a scream that started the first night Malik had sent him away to find solace and comfort in the bed of his wife.

Malik did not want to be attacked but he had seen the inevitability of it; he saw the usefulness of the aftermath. 

When Altair could take the denial no longer, rage overcame him. Malik said, “you have made your bed and I was not in it,” because Altair was a violent, hateful man by nature but he was not a rapist. He was not _vile_ but careless. 

They fought like animals, inspired by old hurts and long denied wants. They tore each other’s clothes, and skin and fell to the ground in a heap of still struggling bodies. Altair shoved him face-down and fucked him. 

Malik withstood it.

\--

There was an order to their lives, in the days before Maria. There was sense. Altair did as he was told; he behaved in accordance with the Creed and he was rewarded. The man was greedy and inexhaustible; his devotion and tireless efforts to better the Assassins at Masyaf a thing of legend. 

Altair glowed in sunshine, resplendent with the adoration of the small-minded. Malik thrived in the long shadows of the library where the scholars were too wise to speak of his depravity. They knew, each of them—every man and woman at Masyaf—they all knew what Altair did to him. 

Malik had no use for their whispers, or for their sneers of disapproval. He sat on a throne, like a king, controlling the greatest Master Assassin in history like a puppet dangling from fraying strings.

\--

“Will you ever forgive me?” Altair whispered against his shoulder, long after the sweat had cooled. His fingers were hopeful dancers, tracing the scars his carelessness had caused. He had been very good; a gracious and kind leader, and he had come for his reward as soon as the castle had stilled at dusk. 

“I might,” Malik said, “if you have suffered enough. If I have taken from you what you have taken from me.”

Altair sighed against his shoulder. “There is nothing I value.” They were bold words but they were not lies. Malik rolled against him, pushed Altair on his back and sat across his thin hips. They were naked still, tacky where the sweat had dried, gritty where the come had become dried lines on his skin. Altair looked at him like he were the sun; the adoration and hope that made his every touch across Malik’s skin a worthless plea for forgiveness he would never earn. 

“There is something,” Malik said to him. He leaned forward and kissed the man. He let himself be petted, he let himself be held close and adored. “I will take it from you and when you have felt the agony of it, I may forgive you.”

He was careful, very careful, to make his threats with the tone of a lover. To offer his body as a balm against the harshness of the words. Altair rolled them over again to fuck away his confusion and his hurt and Malik sang his name like a siren’s sweet song—beckoning him to forget everything but _this_.

\--

It started (maybe) in Jerusalem, when Altair’s arrogant attempts at apologies were abrasive and wasted. He was _desperate_ to be forgiven, to be comforted the way he had always been. The words reached for sincerity but the purpose was greedy.

Malik laughed at them, at Altair, at the absurdity of fate that he should have been maimed and this fool left whole. He might have laughed until his sides were sore and his still wounded arm aching with fresh pain, but Altair looked at him with such _tender regret_ that it stalled out the bitter joy he felt. He said, “I do not forgive you. I will _not_ forgive you.”

Altair hung his head like a beaten dog; like he _deserved_. 

“But it would be foolish to deny that we are well matched in many ways.” Malik did not have the benefit of precognition or he might have known how long he would have to wait; he might have considered the weight of the unintentional nature of how he shackled his fate to this man’s. No, in Jerusalem, with hope in Altair’s eyes the only thing he could see was the brief chance he had to steal the man from the failing grip of Rashid’s crumbling fingers. “You disgust me still, in many ways, but not in all of them.”

Altair nodded like he _understood_ and Malik kissed him. He kissed him like they were lovers still, like they had forgotten their own histories and fallen back into the hastily made bed of old straw and horse blankets. Altair did not wait to be invited but push and pull at them until they were making a mockery of fucking, grunting-and-moaning as they rubbed their dicks one against the other. 

When it was finished, Malik kissed him oh-so-sweetly, and sent him on his way, “there is still work to be done.”

\--

Kadar died with blood on his teeth and sucking wounds in his chest. He died with fear in his eyes and a useless grip around Malik’s helpless fingers. His mouth moved in the dark but the light was too dim to make sense of the words he meant to say.

Malik had no memory for the space between Solomon’s Temple and waking up in the aftermath of the surgeon’s mutilation. “Where is Altair?” he asked the man nearest him. “Where is he?”

“Al Mualim has punished him,” was the answer. “They say he is dead.”

And that (for so brief a catch of time) had brought a sense of peace.

\--

“Why do you hate him?” Kadar asked when they were both alive and whole. His eyes were narrowed into the glint of sunshine that still hovered above the horizon. They were weary from travel, riding the last leg of the journey to Jerusalem. “Is it that you envy him?”

Malik snorted. “What should I envy? His arrogance? His disregard for our Creed? His impetuosity?” He waved his hand to wipe away the _idea_ of it. The conversation had gone on and on and on over the course of his life. It was difficult _now_ to know where the notion that he hated Altair had even started. 

Kadar snorted. “Is it that he lusts after you then?”

“No,” Malik said. He curled his hand tighter into the reins of the horse and looked over at his brother. There was no much similarity between them; only enough that together they might have equaled some image of their parents. “That is useful. It is important to be aware of your advantages, Kadar. It is also important to be aware of your disadvantages.”

The silence that followed the statement was long, he said, “how great is your advantage?”

Malik considered the question, at the value of its whispered words and the true meaning hidden beneath them. There were not many at Masyaf that had ever insinuated what his brother was asking and the few that had were silence with unerring swiftness. “It is not lust that drives Altair to long for me. We have an agreement that satiates his appetite for my body.” 

Kadar laughed at that, “so you have fucked, then.”

“To say it so bluntly, yes. Altair loves me.”

There was no amusement in his brother’s long silence. Kadar let out a sigh like it hurt him. “You should not treat him so meanly.” It was a child’s sentiment. The very sort of thing that should have been extracted from Kadar during the long years of his training. Those ideals of a picturesque world where fairness and love won out. 

“Why shouldn’t I? Because he is a great assassin, because he is the star of our generation? Because he is the best of us?” The regurgitated platitudes were disgusting and chalky on his tongue. “He deserves the treatment he gets.”

“Because he is a man,” Kadar said. “You will ruin him, Malik. What proof do you have that he is not the man you find so disdainful because you have dangled his greatest desire before him on a stick and mocked him with cheap offerings instead? I would hate you if I professed love and you offered sex.”

Malik snorted at that, “you assume Altair wishes to please me above all others. I may be the object of his heart but he serves only Al Mualim.”

“You will ruin him,” Kadar repeated. “Let him go if you cannot love him.”

Malik laughed again. 

\--

They were only children when Altair pulled him away from the path they were meant to travel. They were stupid boys, rolling in hay. Malik was laughing with shock, giddy with the surprise of Altair’s hands under his clothes.

Altair was rough-sweet-kisses against his mouth and sucking-pink-marks on his neck and his shoulders. 

They were stupid boys with dreams of grandeur and greater things. Malik as Altair’s pillow (always his pillow) and the stretch of his youthful skin glowing pink and warm to ease the aches of long hours in the practice yard.

Altair said, “do you believe in what we do, Malik?” like it had troubled him.

“Yes,” Malik said.

Altair turned his head so his chin was against Malik’s chest and he was looking up at his face. He smiled like it broke his heart to hear the words but he nodded his agreement, saying ‘me too’ and he slid up closer to kiss him again. 

Malik was easy on his back with his bent knees pushed open to make room for the fool. His hands were smooth across Altair’s unscarred back as he kissed him back slow-and-easy. It felt like something, on dirty hay beds; it felt like a revolution brewing under his ribs. He kissed Altair with fingers in his short hair and his legs wrapped loosely around his waist. 

Malik must have thought, they fit together with such ease. He must have thought, they were perfect in those moments. 

(But sometimes, long-long after, he thought of that moment with the tremble of Altair’s kiss, that Altair must have thought, _I will believe if you do_ and when he tried to trace the whole of their lives back to the first mistake, Malik thought, he should have whispered, _I don’t believe in anything_ just to see if he could spare them.)


End file.
